[kyt]

I think this is a bad move and an example of feature creep. Were users really asking for this? The problem was that the stream was overloaded with irrelevant projects you may have watched on a whim. It seems like they solved that with the notifications drop down. I'm not sure what the point of Starring is.

[skue]

I agree they could have done a better job of explaining the why for starring, but I assume that starring is a way to keep track of repositories you are interested in, but which you don't necessarily want to see filling up your activity feed.

[reedlaw]

I use watch to help me find repositories I'm interested in, but don't necessarily want to see notifications about. Watched repositories are autocompleted when you begin typing a name in the search field. So starring looks useful to me.

[aviraldg]

I think it's pretty useful. I had tons of projects I'd watched just because they were cool and I wanted to use them in my next projects, not because I actually wanted to follow their development.

[Kerrick]

If I understand correctly, you can now keep track of a repository in two ways: starring it or watching it. If you star it, it's more like a "favorite" in that you can find it easily in the future, but that's it. If you watch it, its activity shows up in your stream much like before. This allows you to separate repositories you like and will want to find later from repositories you want to participate in and follow the development of.

[mcmire]

The point of starring is to do what you probably wanted to do when you watched a project, which is bookmark it without it cluttering up your watch list. Personally I think the star feature is great -- now I don't have to use Codeshelver, which was cool too but kind of half-baked.

[technoweenie]

Stars isn't a new feature, just a renamed one.

[Rayne]

How so? At first I thought it was a renamed 'watch', but since it doesn't put any data in your timeline, I can't figure out what it is for at all. I mean, it's a pretty button and all, but...

[technoweenie]

It is a renamed "watch."